From The Invisible Scar (1966) to the Invisible Bar or the various ways in which la difference does vive and mitigates...

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BORN FEMALE: The High Cost of Keeping Women Down

From The Invisible Scar (1966) to the Invisible Bar or the various ways in which la difference does vive and mitigates against women in the business world. There they face any number of tacit discriminatory practices, from arbitrary salary ceilings down, and Mrs. Bird develops the parallel--a point taken before--with the Negro as a minority group. She's a former Fortune writer, and while a good deal of this material from Margaret Mead to the current media is more or less familiar, she has assembled and correlated it well, going back to the Colonial era (domestic vassalage; sexual availability) and down to today where 39 out of the 46 biggest and best paying public library directorships have been appropriated by men. Mrs. Bird definitely demarcates the personal and the professional (dishes and diapers do not make you a better wife or mother) and believes that the escalation of education will be reflected in more women working in more gratifying jobs. The mystique is applied in an independent stance with a lively collection of home truths and job consequences so that this seems not only born but destined for a substantial female readership.

Pub Date: June 28, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McKay

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1968

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